CIRCOFLOPRO KITS PROVE BEST FOR BARN COMPLEX CONTRACTOctober 2019

A regular customer of Circoflo has made use of their bespoke design service and the custom sized underfloor heating solution to carry out a challenging contract, involving the installation of an air source heat pump, during the conversion of a traditional barn structure in an off-gas area of the Bedfordshire countryside.

Significantly, Air Install Ltd. offered a high performance renewable energy solution to the owner of the rural property at Bendish near Luton, as an economic alternative to the oil-fired boiler package originally under consideration.

The Grade II listed former agricultural building and adjoining structures have been developed into offices, meeting rooms and ancillary spaces for the client’s business, while the complex also includes a gym, yoga suite and kitchen for his private use. Air Install’s engineers have now completed the installation of the ClipRail and FloFloor underfloor heating, supplied as a bespoke bill of materials complete with manifolds and controls, throughout the ground and upper floors and using layout drawings supplied by Circoflo. Commissioning of the full heating and hot water system is due to take place soon.

Steve Kirby, a director of Air Install, commented: “The client was originally looking at having an oil-fired heating system, but we were able to show that an air source heat pump was equivalent to the cost of the boiler plus oil storage tank, and would be more economic to run.

As a company, we operate right across the country, though a lot of our work is in the South-East, normally installing underfloor heating systems with our heat pumps and always going to Circoflo for them. We get good technical advice from Brendan Hourican the National Sales Manager and in this case he recommended the FloFloor system for the yoga suite on the upper level of the barn because the integral diffuser would work well with the 8mm engineered oak flooring which is to be laid over it.

All six of the Circoflo systems available use the same 12mm pipe at 133mm centres, available in lengths of 50, 70 or 90 metres and a choice of two, three or four-port mini-manifolds to reduce congestion in the floor, while also minimising depth of construction.
In this case three manifolds were required across the ground floor layout, with a further one installed to serve the yoga suite. The nine separate zones vary in length from 29m up to 70m, with design floor temperatures in the range from 25-28.50 C.

Circoflo’s ClipRail is the easy way to install pipes into a screeded floor or where price is critical they also offer a simple staple system. FloFloor facilitates the installation of floating floors across various substrates. CircoBoard panels are used for fitting flush on brackets between joists or across battens, while LowDeck offers the ultra low floor build up at only 15mm. The TileDeck system offers a retrofit solution for both Tiled and Vinyl finished floors and completes the Circoflo offering.